Speculative Environments

Catalog description

How is speculative fiction different from science fiction, and what can it teach us about our world today and possible worlds to come? How does environmental speculative fiction engage climate change, ecoapocalypse, pandemics, genocide, the petrostate - and how humans grapple with them? This course addresses these and other questions by focusing on novels by Nnedi Okorafor, Octavia Butler, Louise Erdrich, Waubgeshig Rice, Margaret Atwood, and Omar el Akkad. This discussion-based, upper-level English course also delves into literary theory about speculative fiction, Afrofuturisms, and Indigenous futurisms. Satisfies English major requirement. Satisfies Humanities track of the Environmental Studies major and minor. Satisfies the LTRQ Ways of Knowing requirement.